motes two concepts as the base of its policies: the responsibility of waste generator and extended producer responsibility.

### A. Responsibility of Waste Generator

A waste generator must bear the primary responsibility for the reduction of environmental load caused by its disposal of wastes. “Responsibility of waste generator” is an idea that a business operator that generates wastes should bear the responsibility for proper treatment of the wastes, and it is one of the basic principles of measures for recycling wastes. More specifically, proper treatment of wastes means that a business operator must sort its generated wastes and treat them by itself.

Because the perpetrator of environmental load caused by the disposal of wastes is the generator of the wastes, it is rational to think that the generator is responsible for the reduction of environmental load caused by its disposal of wastes. The root of this idea lies in the so-called Polluter-Pays Principle.

This idea of “responsibility of waste generator” must be continuously and thoroughly promoted. In addition, ordinary citizens cannot be free from their responsibility as a generator of wastes and need to play their roles positively.

### B. Extended Producer Responsibility

Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) is an idea that a producer bears a certain responsibility (physical or financial responsibility) for the reuse, recycling, and disposal of the products it produced even after the products were used and then disposed of. This idea gives producers incentives to develop and produce products that are difficult to be disposed of and easy to be reused or recycled. Now we have problems that there are an excessively large amount of wastes and that it is difficult to reuse or recycle them. Therefore, the extended producer responsibility is one of the important ideas for solving such problems. (Table 3-1)

### C. Fundamental Plan for Establishing a Sound Material-Cycle Society (Sound Material-Cycle Society Fundamental Plan)

The Fundamental Law for Establishing a Sound Material-Cycle Society provides that the Fundamental Plan for Establishing a Sound Material-Cycle Society should be formulated as a fundamental plan related to the establishment of a sound material-cycle society.

The Fundamental Plan for Establishing a Sound Material-Cycle Society is a central device for comprehensively and systematically implementing policies related to the establishment of a sound material-cycle society, and it provides the image of what a sound material-cycle society should be like, sets numerical targets for the establishment of a sound material-cycle society, and shows the direction of actions taken by the national government and other actors.

The second Sound Material-Cycle Society Fundamental Plan decided upon by the Cabinet in March 2008, provides that all actors, including ordinary citizens, business operators, NPOs, NGOs, universities, local public bodies, and the national government should cooperate with one another to take actions for the establishment of a sound material-cycle society. Above all, the plan states that the national government should take the following comprehensive actions: (1) the integrated creation of both a low-carbon society and a society in harmony with nature, (2) the promotion of creation of “regional resource recycling zones,” (3) the promotion of a people’s movement for the 3Rs, (4) the thorough promotion of businesses for a sound material-cycle society, such as green purchasing, (5) improvement of the mechanism of the 3Rs focused on waste generation reduction, (6) improve increasingly sophisticated techniques and systems for the 3Rs, (7) understand information and develop of human resources, and (8) establish an international sound material-cycle society.

In order to steadily implement the Sound Material-Cycle

Table 3-1 Extended producer responsibility described in Extended Producer Responsibility: A Guidance Manual for Governments by OECD

(1) Definitions	An environmental policy approach in which a producer's responsibility, physical and/or financial, for a product is extended to the post-consumer stage of a product's life cycle. More specifically, (1) Producers accept responsibility when they design their products to minimize environmental impacts over the product's life cycle (2) Producers accept physical and/or economic responsibility for those environmental impacts that cannot be eliminated by design.
(2) Primary function	To transfer the financial and/or physical responsibility, in whole or part, of waste treatment from local government authorities and the general taxpayer to the producer
(3) Four principal goals purposes	(1) Source reduction (natural resource conservation, materials conservation) (2) Waste prevention (3) Design of more environmentally compatible products (4) Closure of material-use loops to promote sustainable development
(4) Effectiveness	To pressure parties concerned in the upstream side design and selection of materials for a product; and to enable sending of appropriate signals to producers so that they will include external environmental costs incurred by their products
(5) Shared responsibilities	In the product chain, from manufacturing to disposal, shared responsibilities among all actors are an inherent part of extended producer responsibility
(6) Examples of specific policy approaches	(1) Product take-back (2) Deposit/refund (3) Surcharge/tax (4) Advance disposal fees (5) Minimum recycled content requirements (6) Leasing

Source: Created by the Ministry of the Environment, based on Extended Producer Responsibility: A Guidance Manual for Governments (2001) by OECD